Digital photography users often use online photo-sharing sites to upload their digital photos to easily share with friends and family. Users of these photo sharing sites often generate metadata, such as tags, to describe the images that they have uploaded to the online photosharing site. Metadata, or data about an object, may include a location or time, for example. This type of user-generated content can be utilized to access other content on the Internet.
However, metadata, like tags, are indiscriminately applied, and may not accurately describe an image. For example, all photos from a user's trip to Japan during Christmas might be labeled “japan,” but also “Christmas”. Similarly, images that are part of a family's Christmas celebration, including an annual trip to the beach are also labeled “Christmas.” These images, even with a common tag, have a good chance of not being meaningful to other users. Therefore, these tags are not reliable and congruous with the expectations of the large population of Internet users. If these tags are utilized by other users or services to generate content, the results may not be accurate.
Previously, the ESP Game was developed to test whether two different users would label and image with the same word. The ESP Game allows for two users to generate metadata for one image. This game puts an image in front of two users and then awards points to players when two players suggest the same tag to describe an image. For example, it is likely that two users shown an image of the Augsburg church will both label the image with “church.” The idea of the ESP Game is that if both users use the same descriptive word for the metadata, then there is a high reliability that the metadata the two users used applies to the image.
However, it is highly unlikely that two random users from the Internet will know the location of the church and, thus, will not label the church with “Augsburg.” The way these tags are generated in a multi-user game is not useful in returning images that are representative of the Augsburg church. It is more likely that the user, who is the owner of the image of the Augsburg church, would provide a more accurate description of the image.
Therefore, a method for generating congruous metadata that accurately describes similar images is desired.